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• A True Cultural Ambassador

Irvin Mayfield and Ellis Marsalis
Love Songs, Ballads and Standards
Basin Street Records

Trumpeter Irvin Mayfield has often been an artist who wears his heart on his sleeve. This sentimental exuberance has helped put the panache in Los Hombres Calientes, made his breakup concept CD, How Passion Falls, especially vivid, and has fueled his tireless efforts (as musician, cultural ambassador, library board member, you name it) to resurrect New Orleans after the hurricane and flood that took the life of his father. But the combination of overripe ballads and the chance to record with his mentor, the pianist and patriarch Ellis Marsalis, makes Mayfield's most every bleat bathetic, and the sum of Love Songs corny and starchy. I wouldn't quite call it elevator music. But if I heard it on an escalator, I'd want to get off.

The disc's problems are symbolized by the fact that there are not one, but two versions of the hoary, somnambulant Beatles standard, "Yesterday," bookending the record with a studio opener and concert closer that aren't different enough to justify the redundancy even if the improvisational acumen were more apparent. The song selection sets a high bar—"Superstar" and "A House Is Not A Home" have plenty of stirring versions even without Luther Vandross's definitive takes, and material like "Round Midnight" and "In A Sentimental Mood" require more than lush atmosphere and a few swoons to become distinguished.

The best things here are a solid version of "Mo' Betta Blues," a "Don't Know Why" that provides much needed whimsy, and Marsalis's elegant piano on Corinne Bailey Rae's "Like A Star." Not coincidentally, they are three of the four tunes recorded last June, post-Katrina; whereas the other ten numbers are from 2004. Most of these arrangements were sufficiently dewy just with a quartet (drummer Jaz Sawyer and bassist Neal Caine abet the leaders), but the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra is brought in for further sweetening, another sign of overreach. In the liner notes, Mayfield says he "didn't intellectualize" his song choices. Next time, a few more brain cells might be a better investment.

Love Songs, Ballads and Standards * (one out of five stars)

Ellis Marsalis Quartet
An Open Letter to Thelonious
ELM

An Open Letter To Thelonious, likewise, had the potential to be stodgy and hackneyed. Monk tributes come a dime a dozen, and Ellis Marsalis—the father of Wynton Marsalis, after all—is a thorough but resolutely orthodox jazz scholar and musician. He remains that way on Letter, and proves you don't have to take liberties with classic material to keep it refreshing.

Marsalis admits in the liner notes that he didn't initially "get" Monk, and there is the diligence of atonement in the way he burrows into the crevices of Monk's fractured rhythms and invests himself in both the earnest and wry aspects of the great composer's work. Ellis himself takes the lead on songs involving the ladies in Monk's life, unveiling the languid contentment of "Crespuscule With Nellie" and the sweetness of "Ruby, My Dear." He delivers a brief but memorable two-handed solo on "Light Blue" (misspelled "Light Bue" on the disc) that helps portray an essential Monk contradiction, relaxed complexity. And his dappled notes showcase the beauty of "Monk's Mood," including a solo that captures Monk's ability to be elliptical and allusive yet never lax or otherwise inattentive.

The other star of the quartet is Ellis's youngest son, drummer Jason Marsalis, who among other things was Irvin Mayfield's cohort in Los Hombres Calientes. His drum solos on Letter are plentiful and thus inevitably garrulous on occasion, but his turn on "Jackie-ing" is pure delight, an adventurous mixture of crisp Monk and New Orleans march time, and his hard-bop propulsion on "Straight, No Chaser" gives the tune the feel of Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Saxophonist Derek Douget and bassist Jason Stewart round out the ensemble, with Douget's soprano horn leading the dialogue on "Epistrophy" and the whole band exuding a light-hearted vibe on "Teo" (Monk's paean to his longtime producer, Teo Macero) and the irrepressible "Rhythm-A-Ning." After a nifty solo that drops in a "Sweet Georgia Brown" quote on the latter tune, Marsalis closes out the disc with a solo rendition of "Round Midnight" that is luscious with sentiment yet never cloys. Compare its acuity to the pro forma romance contained in the "Round Midnight" on Love Songs, and hear why good intentions don't suffice without an artistic follow-through.

An Open Letter to Thelonious **** (four stars)